Oenone, Paris, Helen

A Love Triangle in Ovid’s Heroides

Abstract

Ovid’s Heroides is a work that readily lends itself to interpretation, as it allows comparison both with its canonical Greek sources and between the individual letters/poems within the collection if they feature the same story or character. Such examples include the rural nymph Oenone (Her. 5), the Trojan prince Paris (Her. 16), and Helen of Troy (Her. 17). For the modern reader, the letter of Oenone is particularly interesting because, compared to the other heroines of the letters, Oenone is a relatively unknown character today, and was often omitted from the generally known story of the Trojan War. In my contribution, I therefore focus mainly on the design, content and meaning of her letter as written by Ovid, and in doing so I want to highlight the individual passages to which commentators have attributed a special meaning. Particularly interesting are the scenes that appear in all three letters but are presented from each character's own perspective in the light most favourable to the narrator. The last part of the paper lists some possible interpretations of how Oenone’s letter can be read as a whole and how her role can be interpreted within the myth itself, within the collection of letters, and within the genre. My aim is to confirm the importance of her story for Paris, for Ovid himself, and for the wider context of the Heroides, and to restore to it some of the weight of which it is (unjustly) deprived by many commentators.